Madison and Jefferson

by Nancy Isenberg;Andrew Burstein

  14. Madison later speculated that the senators’ visit had been an elaborate ruse to corral wavering colleagues to vote to reject. The Senate had first rejected Madison’s nomination of Jonathan Russell to serve as minister to Sweden, which was meant as a warning shot to the president. But he persisted in believing he had enough votes to carry Gallatin’s appointment. See JM to Gallatin, August 2, 1813, JMP-LC; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 309–311, 313, 316; Ketcham, 559–61; Brant, 6:189–91; Monroe to TJ, June 28, 1813, TJP-LC; “Virginius, to James Madison, the President of the United States,” New York Spectator, July 3, 1813; Annals of Congress, 13th Cong., 1st sess., 84–88, 95–96.

  15. Horsman, War of 1812, 68–69, 74–75.

  16. Lord Wellesley’s words appeared in American newspapers; see, for example, Baltimore Patriot, January 25, 1813; TJ to JM, June 21, 1813, RL, 3:1724; Hickey, War of 1812, 153–54; William Jones to Alexander J. Dallas, July 19, 1813, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Brant, 6:206–7; for reports of British atrocities, see “Letter from Col. E. Parker of Westmoreland County, Virginia,” in Richmond Enquirer, July 16, 1813; and Parke Rouse, Jr., “The British Invasion of Hampton in 1813: The Reminiscences of James Jarvis,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 76 (July 1968): 318–36. The House printed five hundred copies of the report on “British Barbarities” for distribution by members to newspapers as well as to constituents; Annals of Congress, 13th Cong., 1st sess., 489–92.

  17. Congressman Hanson (editor of the Federal Republican) taunted Republicans by asking them why Congress so “studiously shunned an appeal to that unerring test—that touchstone of sincerity and patriotism—the pocket?” See Annals of Congress, 13th Cong., 1st sess., 355, 370–71, 462; also see Raymond M. Champagne and Thomas J. Reuter, “Jonathan Roberts and the ‘War Hawk Congress of 1811–1812,’ ” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 104 (October 1980): 441, 447.

  18. Eppes to TJ, July 21, 1813, TJP-LC. Eppes voted against a direct tax (two other Virginians did not cast votes), but he joined the majority in backing the carriage tax, the stamp tax, and the salt tax. His fellow Virginia Republicans seemed more bothered by the salt tax, with nine defections. The Pennsylvania Republicans voted as a solid bloc for the direct, carriage, and salt taxes, with only one Republican missing. There were six missing Pennsylvania votes on the stamp tax. See Journal of the House, Library of Congress, 80–81, 88–89; Annals of Congress, 13th Cong., 1st sess., 463. Jefferson’s other son-in-law, Thomas Mann Randolph, was, the ex-president wrote, “seized with the military fever.” He was appointed a colonel in the U.S. Army and sent north to the Canadian frontier, where he saw little action. He resigned his commission after less than a year and, returning south, took up the defense of Richmond as an officer in the state militia. His eldest son, twenty-one-year-old Thomas Jefferson Randolph, enlisted as a private but remained nearer to home, managing the family’s flour mill. See Malone, 6:118–22.

  19. TJ to Eppes, June 24, 1813, TJP-LC; Herbert E. Sloan, Principle and Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt (Charlottesville, Va., 1995), 205–13; Donald F. Swanson, “ ‘Bank-Notes Will Be But Oak Leaves’: Thomas Jefferson on Paper Money,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 101 (January 1993): 37–52; on Virginia state banks, see Glen Crothers, “Banks and Economic Development in Post-Revolutionary Northern Virginia, 1790–1812,” Business History Review 73 (Spring 1999): 1–39.

  20. Hickey, War of 1812, 122–23; Latimer, 1812, chap. 6; Argus quote in Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 320.

  21. Hickey, War of 1812, chap. 6; Latimer, 1812, chap. 9; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 329–47.

  22. Monroe to JM, December 23, 1813, JMP-LC; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 366–69, 376.; Eckert, “William Jones: Mr. Madison’s Secretary of the Navy,” 177.

  23. Brant, 6:243–45; Dolley Madison to Hannah Gallatin, January 21, 1814, in Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison, ed. Mattern and Shulman, 184; Granger to TJ, February 22, 1814; TJ to Granger, March 9, 1814, TJP-LC; JM to TJ, February 13, 1814; TJ to JM, March 10, 1814, RL, 3:1737–38, 1740–41. Madison knew about Granger’s betrayal as early as 1812, when Jonathan Dayton wrote to him that Granger was “a most insidious, artful & decided enemy … who was deeply engaged in plans for changing the administration.” Dayton to JM, December 28, 1812, JMP-PS, 5:530; Ketcham, 568.

  24. Col. John Taylor, Arator: Being a Series of Agricultural Essays, Agricultural and Political (Baltimore, 1817), no. 28, “Labour,” 82–86. Ignoring the comments on race, Jefferson, a lifelong student of the science of agriculture, dismissed the work in a letter to John Adams: “As you observe, there are some good things, but so involved in quaint, in far-fetched, affected, mystical conceipts [conceits], and flimsy theories, that who can take the trouble of getting at them?” TJ to Adams, January 24, 1814, The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, ed. Lester J. Cappon (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 421.

  25. Taylor, Arator, no. 47, “Hogs, continued”; no. 59, “The Pleasures of Agriculture”; and no. 60, “The Rights of Agriculture,” 140, 180–84.

  26. Tate, Conservatism and Southern Intellectuals, 1789–1861 (Columbia, Mo., 2005), 58–59, 108–16, 133; Susan Dunn, Dominion of Memories: Jefferson, Madison, and the Decline of Virginia (New York, 2007), 38–39; S. Potter to JM, February 13, 1813, PJM-PS, 5:650–52.

  27. Lynch to TJ, December 25, 1810; TJ to Lynch, January 21, 1811, PTJ-RS, 3:267–69, 318–20.

  28. “Letters of Edward Coles—Second Instalment: Edward Coles to Thomas Jefferson,” William and Mary Quarterly 7 (April 1927): 97–98.

  29. TJ to Coles, August 25, 1814; Coles to TJ, September 26, 1814, TJP-LC; Andrew Burstein, Jefferson’s Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello (New York, 2005), 136–38.

  30. Paul A. Gilje, Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia, 2004), 169–74; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 370.

  31. Hickey, War of 1812, chap. 8; Latimer, 1812, 232–37.

  32. Latimer, 1812, 301–3; JM to TJ, May 10, 1814, RL, 3:1742–43.

  33. Hickey, War of 1812, 195–202; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 393–99, 407–11; Ketcham, 573–74; Brant, 6:271–72; Gerry to JM, July 17, 1814, JMP-LC.

  34. Hickey, War of 1812, 197–98; Horsman, War of 1812, 198–200; Latimer, 1812, 309–15.

  35. Latimer, 1812, 315–20.

  36. Baltimore Patriot, August 25 and September 2, 1814.

  37. Delaware Gazette [Wilmington], September 1, 1814.

  38. New Hampshire Sentinel [Keene], September 3, 1814.

  39. Brant, 6:307–8; National Intelligencer, August 30, 1814.

  40. Latimer, 1812, 323–24; Ketcham, 581–86; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 420–23; Skeen, John Armstrong, Jr., 189–90, 199–200. Among the reasons Madison and Monroe had to distrust Armstrong in 1814 was that he blatantly opposed negotiations with London and wished to continue the war regardless of changing circumstances.

  41. Jones to Dallas, September 15, 1814, George M. Dallas Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

  42. Alexandria Gazette, September 8, 1814; Boston Spectator, September 3 and 10, 1814.

  43. Federal Republican, September 9 and November 29, 1814.

  44. Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (Charlottesville, Va., 1990), 337.

  45. A little over a year before, Jefferson had discussed his views on finance with both Monroe and Jack Eppes, but not with Madison, perhaps for the same reason that Madison had initially withheld from Jefferson his concurrence with Gallatin’s recommendation that a new national bank be established. After he finally read one of Jefferson’s letters to Monroe (at Jefferson’s suggestion), Madison understood what Jefferson wanted: Treasury bills, backed by taxes, to be used as a circulating medium. See JM to TJ, October 10 and October 23, 1814; TJ to JM, September 24 and October 15, 1814, RL, 3:1744–51; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 376–78. It is worth noting that in William Jones’s September 15 l
etter to Alexander Dallas, cited above, Jones observed: “The President is virtuous, able, and patriotic, but finance is out of his reach.”

  46. What Tompkins told Madison was slightly different from what he really felt: he said he thought he could serve the nation better by remaining in Albany. See Ray W. Irwin, Daniel D. Tompkins: Governor of New York and Vice President of the United States (New York, 1968), esp. 186–91; Daniel D. Tompkins, Free Trade and Sailor’s Rights! An Address to the Independent Electors of the State of New York (Albany, N.Y., 1813); Ammon, James Monroe, 336–38.

  47. Gallatin to Alexander Dallas, August 20, 1814, George M. Dallas Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

  48. Ketcham, 589–90; Coles to JM, November 23, 1814, JMP-LC.

  49. Philip S. Klein, ed., “Notes and Documents: Memoirs of a Senator from Pennsylvania: Jonathan Roberts, 1771–1854,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 62 (July 1938): 372.

  50. Waterhouse to TJ, February 17, 1813, PTJ-RS, 5:640–42.

  51. Nicholas to JM, November 11, 1814; JM to Nicholas, November 25, 1814, JMP-LC; Burstein, Jefferson’s Secrets, 71. Jefferson Randolph married Jane Hollins Nicholas in March 1815.

  52. Samuel Eliot Morison, Harrison Gray Otis, 1765–1848: The Urbane Federalist (Boston, 1969), 327, 336–43; Edmund Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts (Boston, 1869), 348–49. By the time the Hartford Convention was about to meet, Randolph was expressing a more skeptical attitude. See Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 479.

  53. Morison, Harrison Gray Otis, 353–82; Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy, 357–58; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 481–82.

  54. Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, Mass., 2005), 145–54, describing the complexities Jackson, Claiborne, and area planters tried to work through in putting slaves and free blacks in a combat zone; Andrew Burstein, The Passions of Andrew Jackson (New York, 2003), chap. 4; Stagg, Mr. Madison’s War, 487–97; Latimer, 1812, 369–77.

  55. New-York Evening Post, February 7 and March 22, 1815; Freneau to JM, March 3, 1815, JMP-LC.

  56. Burstein, Passions of Andrew Jackson, 118–19, 122; Joseph T. Hatfield, William Claiborne: Jeffersonian Centurion in the American Southwest (Lafayette, La., 1976), 303–4; Jackson to Claiborne, February 5 and February 6, 1815; Alexander Dallas to Jackson, April 12, 1815, Papers of Andrew Jackson, ed. Sam B. Smith, Harold D. Moser, et al. (Knoxville, Tenn., 1980–), 3:270–73, 344–46.

  57. TJ to JM, March 23, 1815, RL, 3:1763–65.

  58. Dearborn to TJ, February 27, 1815; TJ to Dearborn, March 17, 1815, TJP-LC. The salutation is to “My dear General, friend, & antient colleague.”

  59. Of those who did not welcome the treaty, British Admiral George Cockburn, who had watched the President’s House burn, was filled with lament. He had “Jonathan” nearly caught in a trap, he thought, and wanted only a little more time to finish him off. Along with Admiral Alexander Cochrane, he was poised to strike in Georgia, preparing to enlist ex-slaves and Indians to attack the interior. Amid the blackened buildings of the federal city, Secretary Monroe was ready with a new strategy for the subjugation of Canada but had to shelve his plans. See Latimer, 1812, 392–94; on Clay, see Merrill D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (New York, 1987), 45–46.

  60. “An Honorable Peace, the Result of a Glorious War,” Providence Patriot, February 25, 1815, citing an article in the National Advocate. On the postwar change in temperament around America, and the renewal of energy and individual enterprise, see Steven Watts, The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America, 1790–1820 (Baltimore, Md., 1987).

  61. [Alexander Dallas], An Exposition of the Causes and Character of the Late War with Great Britain (Philadelphia, 1815), 70, 73. Just prior to the start of the war, Richard Rush had written from Washington to Dallas, then in Philadelphia, urging him to compose a pamphlet in support of going to war: “An able, lucid, view of the whole ground of our dispute with Great Britain, with an animated exhortation to crown it, would explode through the nation like Paines common sense, and do as much if not more good … I would say—you, Mr. Dallas, can turn off such an exciter in a few days.” Rush to Dallas, May 26, 1812, George M. Dallas Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

  62. An Exposition of the Causes and Character of the Late War with Great Britain, 69–70, 77–78. In fact, a good many slaves did escape and cross over to the British lines.

  63. JM to TJ, March 12, 1815, RL, 3:1762–63.

  64. TJ to JM, March 23, 1815, RL, 3:1763–64.

  65. Alexandria Gazette, May 3, 1815.

  66. Monroe to TJ, April 26, 1815, TJP-LC; Monroe to JM, April 30, 1815, JMP-LC; Brant, 6:385.

  67. John Adams to Richard Rush, January 7, 1814, in J. H. Powell, ed., “Some Unpublished Correspondence of John Adams and Richard Rush, 1811–1816,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 61 (January 1937): 35–36. In defense of his declaration of war, Madison’s views on national sovereignty were well captured in his letter to Benjamin Ludlow of New Jersey: “When the U.S. assumed & established their rank among the nations of the Earth, they assumed and established a common Sovereignty on the high seas, as well as an exclusive sovereignty within their territorial limits. The one is as essential as the other, to their Character as an Independent nation.” JM to Ludlow, July 25, 1812, PJM-PS, 5:82.

  68. Madison’s recognition of the key role of New England in recruiting was reflected in a letter to Richard Cutts in 1812: “But what are we to do as to the main expedition towards Montreal, under the maneuvering counteractions of Strong & Griswold [two New England governors], and the general chill diffused throughout the region from which the requisite force was to be drawn?” See JM to Cutts, August 8, 1812, PJM-PS, 5:127–28; also see Lawrence Dilbert Cress, “ ‘Cool and Serious Reflection’: Federalist Attitudes toward the War of 1812,” Journal of the Early Republic 7 (Summer 1987): 123–45.

  69. Before the war began, Jones, as a sea captain, believed that American ships should resist British attempts at impressment. Ship captains should consider negotiation first, he wrote, but if that failed, they should refuse to hand over the sailors “by firm and cool resistance,” followed, if necessary, by “force of arms.” See Eckert, “William Jones: Mr. Madison’s Secretary of War,” 172–73.

  70. For Madison’s critique of British use of “the merciless savages under their influence,” see his “Annual Message to Congress, November 4, 1812,” PJM-PS, 5:428; for the larger debate over civilized warfare and international law, see Robin F. A. Fabel, “The Laws of War in the 1812 Conflict,” Journal of American Studies 14 (August 1980): 199–218.

  71. Ketcham, 584–85; “Memoirs of a Senator from Pennsylvania,” 373.

  72. Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, comp. E. Millicent Sowerby, 5 vols. (Washington, D. C., 1952–59); Malone, 6:171–80.

  73. Ketcham, 604; Malone, 6:144–45; James H. Broussard, The Southern Federalists, 1800–1816 (Baton Rouge, La., 1978), 185–86, and chap. 23; C. Edward Skeen, 1816: America Rising (Lexington, Ky., 2003), chap. 4. To Virginia state legislator Charles Yancey, Jefferson voiced his fears with characteristic animation: “Like a dropsical man calling out for water, water, our deluded citizens are clamoring for more banks, more banks.” See TJ to Yancey, January 6, 1816, TJP-LC.

  74. William Plumer, Jr., Life of William Plumer (Boston, 1857), 427–28; Skeen, 1816, chap. 2.

  75. Henry Adams, History of the United States (New York, 1889–91), vol. 9, chap. 6.

  76. Skeen, 1816, chap. 5. Skeen focuses on how controversial the compensation issue was, both during debate and after passage.

  77. National Intelligencer, April 3, 1816. Through allies, Crawford declared himself a noncandidate, but this did not stop others, including Federalists, from trying to push him past Monroe. See Skeen, 1816, 212–17.

  78. Virginia Argus, May 18, 1816; Ketcham, 606.

  79. Massachusetts Spy, May 29, 1816; Alexandria Gazette, Oc
tober 28, 1816. The “fawning parasite” charge was originally associated with Monroe’s negotiations in England and was leveled at him by a Pennsylvania Republican editor, John Binns of the Democratic Press, who was now the “fawning parasite” to Monroe.

  80. Nantucket Gazette, October 15, 1816.

  81. Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville, Va., 2001), 273–75, 280–81.

  82. Selleck Osborn, An Oration in Celebration of American Independence (Windsor, Vt., 1816); also Vermont Republican, October 14, 1816; Pasley, “Tyranny of Printers,” 281.

  83. Ketcham, 606–8; JMB, 2:1325.

  84. Skeen, 1816, 230.

  85. Indicative of the constitutional complexity he saw, and his willingness to accept conflict, Madison vetoed seven bills during his two terms, the most of any president until the highly confrontational Andrew Jackson. Neither John Adams nor Jefferson used his veto power. See Samuel B. Hoff, “The Legislative Messages of the Madison Administration,” in John R. Vile, Wiliam D. Pederson, and Frank J. Williams, eds., James Madison: Philosopher, Founder, and Statesman (Athens, Ohio, 2008), 256–58.

  86. Leonard D. White, The Jeffersonians: A Study in Administrative History (New York, 1951), chap. 31; Skeen, 1816, chap. 6; TJ to Clinton, April 14, 1817, TJP-LC; John Lauritz Larson, Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the United States (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2001), 66–69, quote at 69.

  87. RL, 3:1774; Malone, 1:406–7, 2:138; John E. Ferling, The First of Men: A Life of George Washington (Knoxville, Tenn., 1988), 321; “Washington’s Resignation Speech (Final Draft),” December 23, 1783, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis (online at http://www.msa.md.gov).

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Madison Lives to Tell the Tale, 1817–1836

  1. TJ to Adams, May 27, 1813, The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, ed. Lester J. Cappon (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 323.